Chapter 327: The Unopened Video

Kevin lowered his head and looked at the phone resting in his hand.

The screen was still completely dark. It only reflected his face, swollen and bruised until it was almost misshapen. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth, slid down his chin, and dripped onto his collar one drop at a time. The knuckles he had struck against the stone tiles earlier had also split open. Bright red blood had soaked into the cold body of the phone.

All he had to do was touch the screen lightly with one finger, and the video inside would begin playing at once. Yet Kevin could not make himself do it.

His thumb hovered over the screen for a very long time. It trembled again and again, as though it no longer listened to him or belonged to his body.

He did not know what was inside, and Galvin refused to tell him. But because he did not know, the fear in his heart became even clearer. It slowly crept up from the deepest part of him, wrapped itself around every bone and joint, and made his entire body turn cold even while the sunlight in the garden was still shining down on him.

Kevin had faced many things before. In the past, fear had never meant much to him. As long as he could get what he wanted, any pain or injury along the way had seemed unimportant. None of it had ever been worth mentioning in his eyes.

But now, he was afraid of a video that had not even been opened.

A vague warning kept sounding inside him. It told him that once he pressed the screen, he would see something he would never be able to forget for the rest of his life.

Kevin wanted to hand the phone back to Galvin. He wanted to force Galvin to give him Helena’s address, then run to find her immediately. As long as he could see with his own eyes that she was still alive, he could choose not to ask what had happened to her.

He could pretend he did not know anything.

He could also pretend there was nothing inside that phone at all.

But he could not do that.

Galvin had made it very clear. Kevin had to finish watching the entire video before Galvin would take him to see Helena.

Those words were like the last rope holding Kevin back at the edge of a cliff. He knew Galvin might be making things difficult for him on purpose. He also knew that the man standing in front of him had no goodwill toward him at all, especially after Kevin had once tried to take Ellie away from him.

But as long as there was even one chance to see Helena, Kevin could not give it up.

He wanted to see Helena. He wanted to make sure with his own eyes that she was still all right. He would kneel down in front of her and let her see for herself that Kevin finally understood just how terribly wrong he had been.

If she wanted to hit him, he would stand there without moving. Even if she wanted to take a knife and stab him, he would not step aside or try to avoid it.

Kevin held on to those thoughts as he struggled to keep the last bit of clear sense left in his mind. He drew in a deep breath, but the moment his chest rose, a sharp pain immediately spread through it. The breath became caught in his throat, and his face turned even paler than it already was.

Kevin slowly lifted his finger toward the screen.

The phone lit up.

There was not much stored inside it. There was only one video file. It had no name and no note attached to it. Even the thumbnail was very dark. All he could barely make out was the figure of someone sitting in the middle of an old, worn-down room.

Kevin stared fixedly at that image.

The woman in the thumbnail had her head lowered. Her long hair covered almost all of her face, making it impossible to see her features clearly. Both of her arms seemed to have been pulled behind her back, as though her hands had been tied there.

A dull ringing began inside Kevin’s head. He kept trying to tell himself that the woman in the video was not Helena.

Helena had always been proud. Even after the Miller family went bankrupt, even when she had been forced to lower her head and beg him for help, she had still tried her best to hold on to the last bit of dignity she had left. A girl like her would never allow herself to end up looking so helpless and miserable like the woman in that picture.

More importantly, Galvin had said that he had already rescued her, so she had to be safe now.

Perhaps this video was only proof that Andrea had kidnapped someone else. Perhaps Galvin wanted him to see how Andrea treated the people who fell into his hands, so that Kevin would understand just how much danger Helena had once been in.

Kevin came up with countless reasons to comfort himself. But perhaps even he did not truly believe any of them.

His finger finally touched the play button. The screen immediately went dark, and the phone gave a faint vibration in his hand.

At first, there were only the sounds of messy footsteps, several men talking over one another, and something heavy being dragged across the floor. The person recording the video seemed to be looking for a better angle, so the image kept shaking from side to side and going in and out of focus.

After several seconds, the scene gradually became clear.

An abandoned warehouse appeared on the screen. The light inside was very dim. A few bulbs hanging high above kept flickering on and off. Dirt and dust covered the ground. Large pieces of paint had peeled away from the old walls, revealing dark patches of dampness and mold underneath.

There was a chair in the middle of the warehouse.

A woman had been tied tightly to it.

The instant Kevin saw the long, tangled hair and the familiar dress on her body, all the blood in his veins seemed to freeze at once.

He did not even need to see her face clearly before he recognized that the woman was Helena.